L’amore addosso by Sara Rattaro

L'amore addosso: a book that talks about love, but what is love? The one between husband and wife, that between two lovers, that between mother and daughter?

A young woman, Giulia, is in hospital hovering between her double life, between truth and reality, between love and marriage.

Giulia took to hospital Federico, his lover, who had an accident while walking around the beach. On the same day, her husband, Emanuele, is in the hospital for a pulmonary bruising and a shoulder fracture, due to a car accident and assisting him was another woman.

There Giulia finds herself confronted with her sins and lies. She is more concerned with Federico’s health than that of Emanuele.

She knows Flavia, Federico’s wife, who is curious to know how she has succeeded and thanked her for saving her. She knows the other part of the medal.

All the novel tells us of Giulia with temporal jumps between the past and the present. Two years earlier, Giulia had discovered that Emanuele had secretly encountered another woman, the same who brought her to the hospital. She had accepted it, suffering and without facing the situation. In the meantime he knows Federico, a writer, of whom she falls madly in love.

Another important character is Giulia’s mother. Even underage, Giulia had found herself pregnant, her mother had chosen for her: she had brought her for a year in England to give birth and give birth to her son. As a grown-up, Giulia can not accept that she has abandoned her son and has not known her. The confrontation with her mother is continuous, Giulia can never face it unless in the end.

“Truth is almost always a story told in half”

In the second part of the novel all these situations melt and overturn. Giulia seems to be in the dark of many things. On the last pages is Emanuele telling his story and why.

The reading of the novel is sliding and passionate. Giulia’s character conquers and deludes at the same time, but this implies reading all over. She is a “liquid” character, passionate, but unable to deal seriously with problems. Deliberate them, complicating them further. Emanuele, on the other hand, is a perfect husband, as Giulia’s mother had guessed right away. “L’amore addosso” I really liked it. At some moments I would seriously yell at Giulia “but what are you doing!” And in the end I thought “That’s what happens when a couple is not talking.”